that business fills me with disgust."

"Human nature is a nuisance, isn't it?" I said.

"Why are you sniggering at me?"

"Because I don't believe you."

"Then you're a damned fool."

I paused, and I looked at him searchingly.

"What's the good of trying to humbug me?" I said.

"I don't know what you mean."

I smiled.

"Let me tell you. I imagine that for months the matter never
comes into your head, and you're able to persuade yourself
that you've finished with it for good and all. You rejoice in
your freedom, and you feel that at last you can call your soul
your own. You seem to walk with your head among the stars.
And then, all of a sudden you can't stand it any more, and you
notice that all the time your feet have been walking in the mud.
And you want to roll yourself in it. And you find some
woman, coarse and low and vulgar, some beastly creature in
whom all the horror of sex is blatant, and you fall upon her
like a wild animal. You drink till you're blind with rage."

He stared at me without the slightest movement. I held his
eyes with mine. I spoke very slowly.

"I'll tell you what must seem strange, that when it's over you
feel so extraordinarily pure. You feel like a disembodied
spirit, immaterial; and you seem to be able to touch beauty as
though it were a palpable thing; and you feel an intimate
communion with the breeze, and with the trees breaking into leaf,
and with the iridescence of the river. You feel like God.
Can you explain that to me?"

He kept his eyes fixed on mine till I had finished, and then
he turned away. There was on his face a strange look, and
I thought that so might a man look when he had died under
the torture. He was silent. I knew that our conversation
was ended.

Chapter XXII

I settled down in Paris and began to write a play. I led a
very regular life, working in the morning, and in the
afternoon lounging about the gardens of the Luxembourg or
sauntering through the streets. I spent long hours in the
Louvre, the most friendly of all galleries and the most
convenient for meditation; or idled on the quays, fingering
second-hand books that I never meant to buy. I read a page
here and there, and made acquaintance with a great many
authors whom I was content to know thus desultorily. In the
evenings I went to see my friends. I looked in often on the
Stroeves, and sometimes shared their modest fare. Dirk
Stroeve flattered himself on his skill